Associate Professor Karen Charlton (Australia)

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• How did you get interested in your career path?

I have always been interested in how public health nutrition has application for translation into practice and policy, particularly with regard to prevention and management of hypertension.

My early research interest focused on the association between diet and physical and cognitive health in older adults in developing countries. What became obvious was that the very high prevalence of hypertension in South Africans, accompanied by poor clinical management thereof, necessitated a population health approach.

My doctoral work identified salt intake levels and key food sources that could be targeted for salt reduction. I worked with the food industry to develop lower salt variants of commonly consumed foods, and tested the products in a randomised clinical trial of hypertensive adults.  A Medical Research Council Policy Brief in 2007 communicated our work and advocated for population-level strategies to lower blood pressure.

After relocating to Australia in 2006, where mild iodine deficiency was a public health issue (salt is not required to be iodised by law), I moved my attention to the policy implications of simultaneous salt iodisation and salt reduction, and was an invited speaker at the World Health Organization (WHO) Technical Meeting on Salt Reduction & Iodine Fortification Strategies (March 2013), and at the Micronutrient Forum meeting, Ethiopia (June 2014).

More recently, I have focused on how different dietary patterns impact on blood pressure regulation and our group has conducted a meta-analysis on this topic. The role of fruit flavonoids (anthocyanins) on blood pressure and cognitive function in older adults has become another current area of my research.

I have been fortunate to be involved in policy related activities in both Australia and South Africa, with regard to synthesizing evidence for revision of Dietary Guidelines in both countries on salt. I am currently a member of the Australian NHMRC Expert Working Group for revision of the Nutrient Reference Value for iodine.

• What are you most proud of in your career or otherwise?

Having had the chance to serve on a few nutrition policy working groups (Obesity prevention; Food Based Dietary guidelines) in the early 2000s, I realised that evidence was essential in order to change clinical practice and influence nutrition policy.

I embarked on a PhD rather late in my career, and graduated in 2006, aged 39. One of my most proud achievements is that my PhD work on strategies to lower blood pressure formed the basis of evidence that encouraged the South African government to be the first country globally to adopt mandatory legislation to limit the salt levels in many processed foods. The policy will come into effect June 2016 and it is estimated that it will result in 20% fewer deaths attributed to high BP per year.